The Metrics: Reload. How much from online activism to actual manifestation?

Social movements are usually understood as a positive aspect of democracy and international community takes kindly to the use of media – especially social media – as means of raising awareness on topics discussed locally. By using it, people feel empowered and grassroots movements acquire a wider dimension and worldwide recognition, resulting in transitions that are most of times congruent to the Western concepts of free countries and peoples.

However, as seen so repeatedly, internet is no panacea for the flaws of the ruling regimes, offering its own perils. Those are related to a plethora of factors, including the sheer number of users, the technological limitations, the offline response and, naturally, the sense in the message spread. At the same time it is ridiculously easy to turn the idea of a manifest public and equally facile to lose it in the middle of the infinity of information poles the web provides society with, which turns the widest of the webs into the doctor and the monster among the ultimate reactive media.

Ready. Set. Like!

The concept of a ‘radical media’ was coined for comprehending way more than just internet. According to John Downing, this sort of media foments group discussions that result in political and social changes. The online medium goes even further, he says, since leaders and adepts are no longer in a hierarchy, which allows the roles of information sources and followers to be temporary and interchangeable. It offers fluidity, rapidity, magnitude and echo to whatever one intends to communicate, it gives transmitters a chance of being heard and supported, making it therefore much more likely to evolve to actions outside the CPU box.

Even so, the first hurdle in the process of turning online sympathy into political actions is the inert user. Ideologically, this user might fully support a cause, and yet do nothing but liking it on Facebook. In a major backfire of a worldwide network, they can feel that they have done more than enough. The vast number of no-shows in manifestations initially created on Facebook makes a good picture of how online actions can differ from reality. Changes in society, nevertheless, are not in the slightest thoroughly achieved through machines. It is necessary that political consciousness goes beyond getting one’s hands dirty – of typing.

I see binary people

Even if knowing how to militate online is still not a rule, it is no wonder that those who acknowledge their power can make political advances independently of distance or geographic location. Governments, on the contrary, seem to flounder, never quite understanding how to master internet and effectively communicate with citizens.

Fromthe Ejército Zapatista de Libertación Nacional to the Arab Spring, social movements made it LCD clear that information and action can be spread, absorbed, fueled by what is on the net, with or without the permission from the government. Political regimes and citizens lack the formula for success on the internet, as this medium reinvents itself all the time. If the latest political happenings rooting on it could teach us something , it is that only by learning how to connect to the insurgents, will those in power have any chances of remaining immune to conflict.

Ultimately, the biggest challenge that online social movements bring is less about how to stay in control than about how to adapt the democratic agora to a beta extension. It also touches the definition of a glocal movement that takes place whenever supporters from all over the world fit to local demands and make international pressure. Hence, besides having reached a governmental sphere, internet modifies in a deep, structural way, starting to update into what we nowadays (still) take for diplomacy and its features.

A classic illustration of the need for a new, modern diplomacy is Julian Assange’s Wikileaks. The news spread by him and his team provoked the reflection of what secrets are truly safe, how to cope with the leaks and, yet, how to keep diplomatic agreements once a country is exposed. It was natural that, after having disclosed their privileged information, the diplomatic forces included some parcels to their (now uncensored) equation. One of the most important among them was the knowledge of numerous civilians and their opinions across the globe that have the power to join NGOs and institutions in their claim for transparency.

How to return an unwanted revolution

Neither the lethargic revolutionaries nor the diplomatic inabilities to read between the html lines are as dangerous as the capability that the international goodwill has to botch up local embryonic negotiations. Although this has not been taken commonly, it is one face of online activism that may bring serious aftermaths to the ideal well-being. Here, ‘well-being’ will be defined as a situation settled in equilibrium according to the local values, which is difficult for the average well-educated, politically engaged, result-oriented and ideologically biased western thinking.

The online anxiety for changes eventually causes disastrous effects for the panoply of actors involved, as it did in Darfur, not many years ago. The international community urged for human rights on the individual level, putting forward convenient and politically correct arguments that enforced enormous rush for action.

Unfortunately, those aspirations did not completely match the local expectations, which prioritisedpeace and reconciliation. The failure to take the peace negotiations one step further was due to the incongruence between the outer demands and the inner necessities, in addition to the use of a ‘deadline diplomacy’ that added extra tension to the moment and still could perfectly portrait how internet political enthusiasts can confuse the idea of quick communication with simple resolution of the political problems.

The bright side of the monitor

In a nutshell, it is easily seen that activists counterbalance their dearth of organisation with the excess of eagerness to change the old governance system. It is time for a new order and they are still experimenting with a medium that is not made to surf on, but surely to deep dive. It is more than expected that misunderstandings, as well as unfavourable results occur in a near future, nonetheless it is nothing compared to the huge power people finally acquired to rethink and redesign the politics that interfere so much in their lives, be that locally or globally, for a more equalitarian society and in more reasonable systems.

Related

Luísa Monteiro is a bachelor in Social Communication and is currently taking a Master's degree in Communication and Politics at PUC São Paulo.
Her researches are closely linked to the studies of internet as a democratic agora and her latest academic production correlates the (offline) social movements and their exposure on the net.

Suppressed OPCW Finding: War-Crime Likely Perpetrated by U.S. Against Syria on 14 April 2018

On May 13th,
Tim Hayward of the Working Group on Syria made
public on his website an utterly damning document that had been suspiciously
excluded from the final investigative report by the
Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) regarding the
U.S.-and-allied allegation that on 7 April 2018 the Syrian Government had
sarin-attacked residents in its town of Douma and had killed a large number of
non-combatants. Seven days after that alleged incident, the U.S. and two of its
allies, UK and France, massively missile-invaded Syria on April 14th, in
alleged international ‘response’ to that alleged national war-crime on the part
of Syria’s Government. It now turns out that that alleged national war-crime
was totally staged by America’s own proxy-soldiers, Islamic terrorists who were
trying to overthrow Syria’s Government, and so the attack against Syria on 14
April 2018 by U.S., UK and France, constitutes an international war-crime, an
unequivocal violation of the U.N.’s Charter.

This excluded
finding by the OPCW is proof that “the
US Government’s Interpretation of the Technical Intelligence It Gathered Prior
to and After the August 21 Attack CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT”.
That’s the way an independent detailed
study by the two top U.S. experts had concluded their study of the U.N.’s
evidence concerning the U.S.-and-allied allegations that there had been a 21
August 2013 sarin-attack by the Syrian Government against its town of East
Ghouta. Their finding then was virtually identical regarding that U.S.-alleged
sarin-use by Syria’s Government — identical to this recent OPCW finding.
And that finding regarding the earlier ‘incident’ likewise was suppressed,
instead of reported by the ‘news’-media. The two investigators in that earlier
report, which was issued on 14 January 2014, were MIT’s Ted Postol and Richard
Lloyd.

The clearest
summary-report about the newer suppressed finding was “signed by Ian Henderson
(an investigative team leader for the OPCW” and is best summarized by Kit
Knightly’s May 14th “Leaked Report:
Douma ‘Chemical Attack’ Likely Staged” at Off-Guardian.org (a terrific website of
investigative journalism that exposes lies by mainstream ‘news’-media, such as
Britain’s Guardian). As Knightly especially pointed out, that OPCW
investigative team’s report to OPCW had concluded:

“In
summary, observations at the scene of the two locations, together with
subsequent analysis, suggest that there is a higher probability that both
cylinders were manually placed at those two locations rather than being
dropped.”

As we shall
later show, that statement at the end of the OPCW team’s report, was a huge
understatement: they had, in fact, proven that “both cylinders were manually
placed at those two locations [by the anti-Government side, as a set-up to
stage the event and blame it on the Government] rather than being dropped [by a
plane, from the Government, as the U.S. alleged].”

So: that’s
virtually a clone of the earlier Postol-Lloyd finding regarding the 13 August
2013 incident, except that, whereas the earlier incident was real and had been
carried out by America’s Syrian proxy-forces (fanatic Islamists), this more
recent ‘incident’ was (as now is clear not only from the latest revelation)
entirely staged by the U.S.-and-allied side. It had not existed at all.

Obviously, if
that finding is confirmed by an international tribunal not for internal
war-crimes but for international war-crimes, then Donald Trump, Theresa May,
and Emmanuel Macron, could be sentenced to prison, or worse, but is there any
tribunal anywhere that could handle such cases? Almost certainly not. Leaders,
such as those, stand above any law. And isn’t that the real problem here?

On 17 May 2019,
Russia’s Tass news agency headlined “Militants
preparing provocation with chemical weapons in Syria” and
reported that, “Militants from Jebhat al-Nusra terrorist group (banned in
Russia) are preparing a provocation to accuse Russian servicemen of using
chemical weapons in Syria, the Russian Center for reconciliation of the
conflicting sides said on Friday [May 17th].” Jabhat al-Nusra is Syria’s branch
of Al Qaeda, and U.S. President Barack Obama’s efforts to overthrow the Syrian
Government depended
very heavily upon that organization to train the non-Kurdish
proxy-forces that the U.S. regime and its press called ‘rebels’ instead of
jihadists (which they actually were). The U.S. armed
and protected al-Nusra.

Russia’s Center
for Reconciliation in Syria says it’s been warned that Jabhat Al-Nusra
terrorists brought in chlorine containers to a local village, where they aimed
to work with the White Helmets to stage “a provocation.” … According to the
source, on the afternoon of February 12, rebels from the Jabhat Al-Nusra
(Al-Nusra Front) terrorist organization brought three cars packed with more
than 20 cylinders of chlorine along with personal protective equipment to
Serakab. Additionally, according to the caller, representatives of the local
branch of the White Helmets, wearing individual means of protection, conducted
rehearsals of “giving first aid” to “local residents” who
were supposedly suffering from poisoning.”

That appears to
have been an accurate description of what the OPCW investigators found in Douma
after the faked 7 April 2018 incident there. However U.S.-allied press didn’t
report anything of the kind, neither before nor after that faked incident. The
reality was suppressed instead of reported there. The latest suppressed finding
by the OPCW is a repeat of that pattern.

Further
indication of how clear the evidence actually is that the 7 April 2018 Douma
incident was staged has been presented by the excruciatingly detailed May 12th
document from the team of Paul McKeigue, David Miller, and Piers Robinson,
headlined “Assessment
by the engineering sub-team of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission investigating the
alleged chemical attack in Douma in April 2018”. It explains
“that the cylinders were manually placed in position is ‘the only plausible
explanation for observations at the scene’,” BECAUSE (and this is quoting now
directly from paragraph 32 of the OPCW Engineer’s suppressed report of his
team’s findings) “The dimensions, characteristics and appearance of the
cylinders, and the surrounding scene of the incidents, were inconsistent with
what would have been expected in the case of either cylinder being delivered
from an aircraft. In each case the alternative hypothesis produced the only
plausible explanation for observations at the scene.”

The full
paragraph 32 opened by saying that “At this stage the FFM engineering sub-team
cannot be certain that the cylinders at either location arrived there as a
result of being dropped from an aircraft.” But when it went on to say “In each
case the alternative hypothesis produced the only plausible explanation for
observations at the scene,” that “alternative hypothesis” referred to the
alternative to the cylinder’s “being dropped from a plane.” That “alternative
hypothesis” refers to people on the ground having placed it there. That
“alternative hypothesis” referred to the event’s having been staged by people
on the ground. That “alternative hypothesis” referred to the U.S. side’s
proxy-forces — America’s ‘Syrian rebels’) having staged this event and filmed
its alleged aftermath so that the U.S.-UK-led White Helmets could then feed it
to the U.S.-and-allied ’news’-media so as to enrage their publics against
Syria’s Government enough for those publics to think that the subsequent
U.S.-and-allied bombing of Syria, On 14 April 2018, was a ‘humanitarian’ action.

The OPCW’s
Engineering team stated there, very clearly, that the U.S.-and-allied
allegations that those cylinders had been dropped from a plane or planes
“CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CORRECT,” as Postol and Lloyd had previously said about the
U.S.-and-allied alleged Syrian Government 21 August 2013 sarin gas attack
against East Ghouta. This is a tactful way of saying that the U.S. and its
allied regimes had lied about it.

Britain’s Daily
Mail headlined on May 16th “Strange
News from the OPCW”, and Peter Hitchens, at his blog there,
reported that “I have received the following reply from the Organisation for
the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.” It said that, “the OPCW Technical
Secretariat is conducting an internal investigation about the unauthorised
release of the document in question.” This had been an “unauthorized release”;
no question was being raised as to the document’s authenticity.

Who will get
the rope to hang Trump, May, and Macron? Of course, nobody. This is the type of
world we are living in. Accountability and punishment are only downward, to the
individuals below (and many of them are railroaded); credit and rewards are
only upward, to the masters above; and so there is no ultimate downside for the
people at the very top to perpetrate any crime. There really is no legal
jeopardy for people in the positions of Trump, May, and Macron. Such people
administer whatever laws actually apply to themselves. There is no
accountability for such people, in our world. They are above the reach of any
law. And their press say that they are a free press, and that their nation is a
democracy. Has the term “democracy” now lost all significant meaning? Or is
everything that’s important now, just propaganda, just lies? Is that what we
should expect? How can democracy even function under such conditions? It
obviously can’t.

Related

Al
Qaeda-backed jihadist groups Katibat Imam al Bukhari (KIB), the Islamic Jihad
Union (IJU) and the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), consisting mainly of Uzbeks
from the Fergana Valley of Central Asia and Uyghurs of Chinese Xinjiang,
jointly conduct “Al-Fath Jihadi Operations” alongside the Taliban in
Afghanistan amid the US-Taliban negotiation. KIB’s online media channel
“Katibat Imam al-Bukhari under the Islamic Emirateof Afghanistan”
that implies a Taliban’s subsidiary began to regularly publish news about the
“victorious offensives of the warriors of Islam.” As well as IJU’s
main two social media channels Badr at-Tawhid and al-Sodiqlar TV (al-Sodiqlar
in Uzbek, which means ‘The Truthful’) often release videos featuring both the Taliban
and IJU on the joint battleground.

For
example, on April 14, 2019, KIB’s Telegram channel reported that “al
Bukhari’s Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate attacked enemy positions and killed
36 militaries of the Kabul administration, among which 4 were high-ranking
commanders.”As evidence of its successful attack, KIB published video and
photo materials. Another report, dated May 3, 2019, states that “Mujahideen
of our Jamaat blew up the Ranger vehicle in Zabul province as a result 7
government soldiers were killed.”

Telegram’s
online channel also published an audio message by the emir of the KIB’s Afghan
division Jumabai Hafizahulloh, who calls on the Mujahideen to “commit
Istighfar (the act of seeking forgiveness from Allah) to defeat foreign
invaders led by the United States of Satan and establish Sharia law in
Afghanistan.”In his speech, he frequently refers to religious works of the
famous Sunni Muslim scholar Ibn Taymiyyah whose worldviews influenced the
development of Salafism and Takfirism and became the basis of the ideology of
al Qaeda and ISIS. At the end of the speech, he called on all Muslims to join
the jihad against the “American occupiers.”

According
to audio and video materials distributed by al-Sodiqlar TV on Telegram, Uzbek
militants of IJU have frequently taken part in “Al-Fath Jihadi Operations”
alongside the Taliban, fighting against Afghan security forces. For example, on
April 14, 2019, IJU released a video showing how Uzbek militants under the
leadership of the Taliban attacking an Afghan security forces’ convoy in
Baghlan province’s capital Puli Khumri and seizing heavy trucks on the Baghlan-Balkh
highway, part of the Ring Road which links Kabul to the north.

TIP, KIB
and IJU’s videos in Telegram once again reaffirmed al Qaeda-backed Central
Asian jihadists’ role within the Taliban insurgency, as the jihadists fight
together to resurrect the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Features of the Taliban military operation

As is
known, the Taliban annually conducts military operations under various
formidable names that have an ideological and religious implication. In 2018,
its military action was called ‘Al Khandaq Jihadi Operations’ (from the name of
the famous Battle of Khandaq led by the Prophet Mohammed in
627), which also involved Sunni violent extremist groups: Uyghurs’ TIP and Uzbeks’ KIB. On April 12, 2019, the Taliban
announced the launch of a new “Al-Fath Jihadi Operations” (which means
Victory), which was published on the website ‘Voice of Jihad’ of ‘the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan’
(Taliban so refers to itself).

A
distinctive feature of “Al-Fath Jihadi Operations” from previous military
actions is that the Taliban this year applies new tactics of attacks aimed
against the government and municipal officials, the military and police forces
of Afghanistan, and does not prioritize attacks on US and NATO forces. Perhaps
that is why the Taliban-backed Uzbek and Uyghur jihadist groups often report on
successful military operations, as local officials and government offices in
remote provinces become an easy target for them.

Another
distinguishing feature of “Al-Fath Jihadi Operations” that it is conducted
against the backdrop of US-Taliban peace talks. Trump administration’s decision to pull American forces out of
Afghanistan and begin direct peace talks between the US and the Taliban without
inviting official Kabul inspired the Taliban to tighten the “al-Fath Jihadi
Operations”, and was ablow to the morale of Afghan generals. The Taliban are
already stronger today than they have been since their ouster in 2001,
controlling or holding sway over 60 percent of Afghanistan’s districts. Therefore,
they in advance methodically and
cynically rejectedLoya Jirga (Afghan grand assembly) demands for a cease-fire and shunned
direct talks with the Afghan government, describing it with insulting terms
like “a US-imposed puppet regime,” “domestic stooges,”
“the hollow Kabul administration” and “cabinet offoreign invaders
“.

The main
topics of Doha’s peace talks between US peace envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad
and co-founder of the Taliban, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, were the full
withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan and ensuring that Afghanistan is not used as a base for foreign terrorist organizations,
above all for al Qaeda and ISIS, to attack other countries.

After the
completion of the sixth round of negotiations, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah
Mujahid, in a May 9 statement, assessed the outcome of the meeting as “positive” and the
parties made “progress” on some points. But the activities of al
Qaeda-linked Central Asian Salafi-Jihadi groups KIB, IJU and TIP in Afghanistan
and their active participation in “al-Fath Operations” testified, there is not
any “progress” to cut the Taliban’s cooperation with al Qaida.

To achieve
international recognition the Taliban in July 2016 issued a statement for the Central Asian
countries,
in which it assured its neighbors that “the Islamic Emirate does not seek
to interfere in the internal affairs of others nor will it allow anyone to use
the land under the control of Islamic Emirate against anyone else.” During
the Moscow Conference in February 2019, the Taliban reiterated “we do not allow anyone to use the soil of Afghanistan against other
countries including neighboring countries.”

But all
these false claims are a political ploy aimed at hiding the Taliban’s ties with
al Qaeda and its Central Asian affiliates. The KIB, IJU and TIP’s media arm has
shown the Taliban keeps using the Uzbek and Uyghur jihadists against West
Coalition and Afghan forces, and collaborating with al Qaeda inside
Afghanistan, despite assurances to the contrary.

Taliban and al Qaida are the “godfathers” of
Uzbek and Uyghur jihadist groups

As is
known, the first contact between Uyghur and Uzbek Islamists with the Taliban
and al Qaeda occurred in the early 1990s, when members of the Eastern Turkistan
Islamic Movement (ETIM) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, pursued by the
Chinese and Uzbek authorities, fled to Afghanistan. Since then, the Taliban and
al Qaeda became the “godfathers” of the Central Asian Islamist groups
and widely opened the doors of global jihad for them.

The Taliban
have been continuously working alongside Uzbek and Uyghur jihadist groups that
have sworn allegiance both to al Qaeda and the Taliban, and today this bayat
(an oath of allegiance) is effectively operating. In turn, the leaders of al
Qaeda bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri both swore allegiance to the
Taliban, with the result that IMU and TIP (former ETIM) were under double
tutelage and control. Although the Taliban staunchly focused on Afghanistan and
has not demonstrated al-Qaeda’s global jihadist ambitions outside the country,
nevertheless, it continues to host Uzbek and Uyghur militant groups with
far-reaching goals.

Under the
influence of “godfathers,” ideological views of Uzbek and Uyghur militants expanded
significantly with global aspirations. Today, they are not limited to the local
agendas to overthrow the political regimes in Central Asia and China and set
themselves global tasks to create a world caliphate.

This Russian
and Turkic-speaking terrorist groups are trusted by al Qaeda and Taliban
leaders and have become a link in their strategic ties. In different years,
TIP, IMU and IJU were added to the United Nations Security Council
Sanctions List
as being associated with al Qaeda and the Taliban. In addition, the US State
Department designated all of these Central Asian jihadist groups, including Katibat al-Imam Bukhari, as “global terrorist
organizations” because of their involvement in terrorist attacks alongside the
Taliban and al Qaeda.

The Taliban
nervously reacts when Central Asian groups break their bayat al Qaeda and
considers betrayal an unforgivable crime. In December 2015, the Taliban
captured and executed about 60 Uzbek jihadists led by IMU leader Usmon Ghazi in the Zabul province who broke
al-Qaeda oath and pledged to Islamic State.

Sometimes
the Taliban, as befits a good “godfather,” forgive Central Asian militants who
violated their oath to al Qaeda. After the Taliban’s elimination of the self-proclaimed Islamic State
Khorasan Province (ISIS branch in Afghanistan) in the northern Afghan province
of Jawzjan,20 Central Asian fighters (citizens of Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan)from Qari Hikmatullah’s ISIS network, who surrendered to the Taliban,
were evacuated, along with their families, to Kohistanat district of Sar-e Pul
province. Today they serve the Taliban, who has become their new master.

Taliban’s religious roots in support foreign
terrorist groups

As the US
Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation ZalmayKhalilzad stated in
March 2019, the US and the Taliban “agreed in draft”that covers two key issues:
a “Coalition’s withdrawal timeline” and “effective counterterrorism
measures.”According to this “draft”, the Taliban would provide
“counter-terrorism assurances” that Afghanistan would not be used as a base for
terrorist groups to attack foreign countries.

Despite the
Taliban’s generous promises, after it comes to power in the future (judging by
the tone of the negotiations, today’s events are developing precisely in this
vein), there are no guarantees that the Taliban will renounce al Qaeda and stop
supporting Central Asian Salafi-Jihadi groups. The problem is not the
reluctance of the Taliban, but in its radical Islamist ideology and Sharia law,
according to which the framework of relations between Ansar [natives] and
Muhajireen [foreign fighters] are clearly outlined.

As is known
from the history of Islam, mutual relations between Ansar and Muhajireen relies
on Islamic values when the local inhabitants [Ansar] of Medina warmly welcomed,
provided shelter and supported the Prophet Muhammad and his followers
[Muhajireen], who had left their homes behind for widespread Islam during the
fight against unbelievers in 622.

The Surahs
of the Qur’an, Al-Anfal [8:72] and Al-Hashr [59:9], detail the responsibilities
of the Ansar and Muhajireen relationship. For example, Al-Anfal obliges Ansar
to help Muhajireen: “Indeed, those who have believed and emigrated and
fought with their wealth and lives in the cause of Allah and those who gave
shelter and aided – they are allies of one another. But those who believed and
did not emigrate – for you there is no guardianship of them until they
emigrate. And if they seek help of you for the religion, then you must help,
except against a people between yourselves and whom is a treaty.”

As the ups
and downs of the Taliban rule showed, the Taliban is strict followers of the
Ansar doctrine. During the rule of the Taliban, its territory, so-called
“Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” became the main shelter for
Muhajireen of al Qaeda and other foreign terrorist groups. Central Asian
Islamists massively migrated there. During the reign of the Taliban, IMU in 1999-2000 twice attacked
southern Kyrgyzstan. These fighting clashes went down in history under the name of the Batken War, during which more than 50 soldiers
of the Kyrgyz army were killed.

The ties
between the Taliban and al Qaeda proved to be so strong that after 9/11 the
Taliban refused to hand over the main terrorist Bin Ladin to the US. There is
much evidence, including joining Central Asian jihadists to “Al-Fath Jihadi
Operations”, that the Taliban and al Qaeda ties remain strong. Therefore, it
can be expected that in the event of the US withdrawal and the coming to power
of the Taliban, Afghanistan will again become home to international terrorist
groups.

Related

The Russian Mafia

Since 1992, the Russian word Mafyia has
been officially used in the Russian Federation’s documents to refer above all
to organized crime, structured through stable groups that repeatedly perpetrate severe crimes and
offences. In particular, this word refers to the interests of the world
“below” – the invisible universe of organized crime – with the world
“above”, namely institutions, ruling classes, politicians and
companies.

Both the real Mafia, namely the Sicilian one, and the Russian one were
born around mid-19th century.

The Sicilian Mafia became the
“parallel State” in a region where the Unitary State did not exist or
counted for nothing. A case in point is the Baron of Sant’Agata, the feudal
lord of Calatafimi, who ordered his mobsters to “side with the winners”, when
he realized that Garibaldi’s troops, the so-called “Garibaldini” were winning
in the plain.

The Sicilian
“organization”, which had long-standing roots -probably Arab and in any case
independent of the Kingdom centred on Naples and the Campania region –
discovered its political role precisely with Garibaldi-led Expedition of the
Thousand that landed in Sicily, after which it became the primary mediator
between the small group of “Piedmontese” soldiers and the great mass
of peasants. It immediately agreed with the feudal lords, who helped it considering
that it was winning.

The Mafia itself was both the improper
bank of the wealthy feudal lords and the only form of effective social control,
solely in favour of the Sicilian feudal elites – and hence also of the Unitary
Kingdom.

As
happened also in Naples, when Garibaldi appointed Liborio Romano – who was also
the Head of Camorra – as Chief of Police. An inevitably very effective
policeman.

Conversely, in Russia organized crime was
initially used – in politics – by
various revolutionary groups to fight the Tsar.

Later, there was the magic moment of an important “friend of the
people”, namely Nicholai Ishutin.

He
was the first to establish a group of professional revolutionaries, in 1864,
simply called “the Organization”.

However, with a view to better achieving
the revolutionary, anarchist and violent aims of his Organizacjia, Ishutin
created another new structure. It was called the “Hell” and had to
engage in all possible illegal activities, together with the already active
criminals: murder, theft and blackmail. All this had to happen while the
“Organization” was running its lawful social and organizational
activities.

Hence, for the first time politics became the cover for a criminal organization.
Goodness knows how many imitators Comrade Ishutin had.

It was the beginning of a very strong bond
– also at theoretical level, through many excerpts from Lenin’s texts that
exalted Russian revolutionary populism – between organized crime and the
Bolshevik Communist Party.

In
fact, on June 26, 1907, a bank stagecoach of the State Bank of the Russian
Empire was attacked and robbed in Tiflis, Georgia. It was a robbery fully
organized by top-level Bolsheviks, including Lenin and Stalin.

There was also the strong support of local
criminals led by Ter-Petrosian (“Kamo”), the Head of the Georgian mob and also
Stalin’s early associate.

The relationship between organized crime
and Bolshevism – particularly with reference to the “agrarian reform”
of 1930-1932 – remained central.

The Soviet power absolutely needed its extra legem left hand to harshly
bring peasants into line and to militarily organize the conquest of factories,
as well as to control or physically eliminate the entrepreneurs or bureaucrats
of the old Tsarist regime.

Everything changed with Stalin, who,
together with the stabilization of the Bolshevik regime, made possible also the
verticalization and creation of a unitary command hierarchy in the vast world
of Russian crime – and in the Party.

Hence the Organizatsja was founded, i.e. a strongly verticistic
Panrussian structure – as indeed the Bolshevik Party was.

The “Organization” – full of symbols and
particular rites, like the many para-Masonic organizations of the revolutionary
Napoleonic network in Italy, which imitated the secret society of Carbonari (the
so-called Carboneria) or, precisely, Freemasonry, albeit with entirely new
mechanisms and symbols – was sung heroically by one of the poets, former
“Thief-in-Law” (the generic term used by Stalin to designate all the
members of the Organization), but much loved by Stalin, namely Mikhail Djomin,
who exalted the achievements of the Vorovskoi Mir, the Thieves’ World, that had
only one code of conduct and revenge throughout the USSR.

Hence
the Party established the first organizational structure of the
“Thieves-in-Law”, who much operated during the Stalinist regime: the
Mir “brigades” were led by a “reserve group” that generated
and selected an additional covert group that had to be permanently related to
the Soviet political, economic and financial power.

In fact, the “Vory v Zakone”,
the Thieves-in-Law, had relations on an
equal footing with the Party and State leaders. They dealt with the various
“brigades” and managed the odshak, the cash pool, through an ad hoc Committee.

Through the odshak, said Committee mainly paid salaries to the
Organization soldiers, but above all invested its proceeds in the so-called
“white” economy.

Without the criminal organizations and their
autonomous finance, there would have been neither the Soviet normalization
after Stalin’s purges, nor the money for
Leninist industrialization and the funds – extremely needed for the USSR
– targeted to foreign trade and the related sales of raw materials from 1930
onwards.

This also applied to the Sicilian Mafia, a
true organization between two worlds, the American and the Italian ones, which
invested in real estate in Sicily when there was no capital, in the aftermath
of the Second World War, or refinanced capitalism in Northern Italy after the
political and union storm in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Without Mafia’s capital and without the
protection provided by some entrepreneurs to the most important fugitives in
Milan, there would have been no economic recovery after the disaster of 1968.

Reverting to the Bolsheviks, Stalin accepted
the presence of the “Thieves-in-Law” in their main sectors of
activity, in exchange for their careful persecution of his personal and Soviet
regime’s political adversaries.

Years later, even de Gaulle did so when
proposing to the Corsican underworld – one of the most ferocious in Europe – to
fight the OAS and eliminate it, in exchange for some State favours and the
transfer of many gangsters of the Brise de Mer – as the Corsican Mafia was
called – to Marseille.

Hence there is no modern power that could do
without its particular “Thieves-in-Law”. A case in point was China,
in the phase of the “Four Modernizations” and the subsequent
Tiananmen Square movement, or the United States itself, which dealt primarily
with its various Mafias, especially in periods of severe financial crisis.

In
the 1950s, shortly before Stalin’s death, inter alia, a very close relationship
was established between the “Organization” and the Soviet power
leaders.

It
was exactly the underground economy – fully in the hands of the “Thieves-in-Law”-
which, in Brezhnev’s time, became the meeting point between Mafia and
Communists.

The
Organizatsjia already had excellent relations with the parallel
“capitalist” organizations – relations which were established upon
the creation of the Russian structure in the meeting held in Lviv in 1950 – and
it became essential to find the goods which were never found on the Russian
market, including weapons and illicit capital flows.

Corruption became the real axis of bureaucracy
and of the Party itself, while there was a spreading of poverty that closely
resembled the poverty of Ukrainian and Crimean peasants during the so-called
“agrarian reform” of 1930-1931.

Later, always in agreement with the Bolshevik
leadership, Mafyia organized – in every factory or office – “clandestine
units”, not falling within the scope of the collectivist system, which
created an underground market that, from 1980 to 1991, was even worth 35-38% of
the Soviet GDP.

The
proceeds from that semi-clandestine trade were shared between the Party, the
“Organization” and the law enforcement agencies. No one could escape
that mechanism.

Again in the 1980s, precisely due to the social
and political pervasiveness of the “Thieves-in-Law”, the
Organizatsjia was structured into units for each commodity sector, especially
with units specialized in oil, minerals, wood, precious stones and even caviar.

At
that stage, however, many Soviet Party and State leaders were officially
accepted in the Organizatsjia, thus becoming the necessary link between the
“Thieves-in-Law” and the institutions.

Furthermore, with Gorbachev’s reforms, Mafyia
was no longer only an important part of the economic system,but became the
economic system in its entirety.

The elimination of the old political
apparatus and fast privatizations enabled the old leaders of the various
“clandestine units” to quickly collect the initial capital to buy
everything going from companies onto the now apparently liberalized market.

Sometimes Mafia’s intimidation was also
needed, when the old employees did not want to assign – for a few roubles –
their shares that the law allowed to be allotted between workers and managers
of the old State-owned factories.

In
1992 Yeltsin himself admitted that over two thirds of the Russian production
and commercial structure were in the hands of the “Organization”.

However, in memory of the old ties with
similar organizations abroad, only Mafyia did start the first joint-venture
contracts with Western companies and 72% of that opening onto the world market was
only the work of the Organizatsija.

That was exactly what Judge Falcone would have dealt with in Russia with
his Russian colleague Stepankov, if he had not been killed with his wife and
three agents of his escort in a bomb attack.

The joint venture worked as follows: firstly, foreign capitalists put
their money into the companies of the “Organization” and later –
without realising it and only with the hard ways – they were in the hands of
the old “Thieves-in-Law”.

Nevertheless, it was from 1990 to 1992 that the Russian Mafia structure
penetrated the West with vast illegal funds managed together with the local
Mafias.

Not
surprisingly, a few days after the Capaci bombing, Giovanni Falcone was to fly
to Russia to talk with the Russian Prosecutor General, Valentin Stepankov, who
was investigating into the CPSU funds that had disappeared in the West.

The
intermediary of the operation could only be the “Organization” that
knew the Sicilian Mafia very well, at least since the aforementioned meeting
held in Lviv in 1950.

A huge
amount of money went from the CPSU to the “sister” parties and
probably the issue regarded also the failed coup against Gorbachev in August
1991.

Each CPSU faction had its autonomous funds –
often huge ones – given to “sister” parties but, above all, to their
most similar internal wings. Here a significant role was played by the covert bank
accounts held in Zurich, together with the Wednesday air transfers to the local
Narodny Bank, as well as the money transfers that took place during the visits
of the CPSU executives to the various local “comrades”.

Nevertheless, the cash flows -managed only by
the Organization -were regarded by the CPSU’s “old guard” mainly as a
source of personal survival and a basis for future political action at national
level. Everyone, ranged face to face upon the field of the new CPSU factions,
thought to said cash flows.

Coincidentally, it was exactly in those years
and months that the Sicilian Mafia expanded – for its drug business – to the
Caucasus and Anatolian Turkey, on the border with the new Russian Federation.

At
that time – as currently – the Russian Mafyia had preferential relations with
the Sicilian Mafia, the Neapolitan Camorra, the Chinese triads and the Turkish
Mafia.

Also the relations with Latin American and
Arab criminal organizations have been mediated by Sicilians or Calabrians (in
South America), Turks (in Central Asia and India) and Chinese (in Maghreb and
Africa).

Currently the Organization’s yearly turnover
is still 2,000 billion roubles approximately, with weapons – including nuclear
ones – which were provided by the Mafyia sections within the Soviet and later
Russian Armed Forces.

As
even Luciano Violante – the former President of an important anti-Mafia
Parliamentary Committee – maintained,
both the CPSU and the KGB have long had
excellent relations with the Sicilian Mafia. The Russian Mafyia itself
is now the world centre where money laundering strategies, as well as the
division of territories at international level and the new strategies of
relations with the various ruling classes, are managed.

Violante used to say that the CPSU and the
KGBhad put in place the most recent Russian Mafia, with which they were
gradually confused.

Hence the new post-Soviet oligarchy – selected
after Mafia wars that,between 1990 and 1995, exacted a toll of 30,000 victims –
has now merged with the ruling class.

As Solzhenitsyn used to say, currently in
Russia a maximum of 150 people rules. Putin deals with the
“Organization”, but he is certainly not linked to it.

Furthermore, according to the most reliable
Russian sources, currently the “Thieves-in-Law” network is composed
of about 50,000 people, including managers and mere “soldiers”.

Nevertheless, their network of intimidation and capital makes them
essential in carrying out any kind of “white” operation. They are the
bank of the new Russia, considering that all the official banks are part of the
“Organization”.

In
the Russian media jargon, the Russian Mafia bosses who have reinvented
themselves in the legal business are called avtoritet(“authorities”).

The
Russian Mafyia also operate abroad, throughout Europe, but does not operate
directly in the territory of the various countries. If anything, it seeks
relations with the State and bureaucracy, through the national criminal
networks, without by-passing them.

Currently the Russian money laundering hub is
still France, while recently the “Organization” has been spreading
quickly within the German economic, banking and commercial fabric.

According to the Italian police sources, the
capital flows of the Russian “Organization” in Italy are equal to
38.5 billion a year, while the flow of Russian money laundering is still
focused on France, albeit with some operations made in Spain and Portugal. A
diversification already underway, which could also affect Italy.

The
first channel has always been Latvia, used by Russian mobsters to enter the
Euro area directly.

With a view to penetrating Latvia, the Russian
“Organization” created dummy companies based in London.

Later a Russian company lent money to the
company based in London – a company with main headquarters often located in
Moldova.

The
Russian company did not repay the debt – hence a corrupt judge in Moldova
forced the Russian company to transfer capital to a Moldavian account.

Hence the money entered Latvia in a perfectly
legal way and later the Euro area and Western economies.

The network has already endangered 753 Western banks – and money
laundering is still one of the primary business activities of the Russian
“Organization”.